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Just Foreign Policy News July 14, 2010Vote: Dumbest Mistake in a "South of the Border" Review! The Oliver Stone documentary, "South of the Border" takes aim at the media for its misinformed and misleading coverage of Latin America. The film includes clips from CNN, network news programs, the New York Times, Fox News, and other media to demonstrate just how bad the coverage can be. But a host of reviews of "South of the Border" serve as additional examples, getting countries and presidents mixed up with each other, confusing democratic elections with coups d'etat, and other errors. What do you think is the dumbest mistake in a "Border" review so far? Vote in the poll!http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/7/13/154938/096

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Vote for Dumbest Mistake in a "South of the Border" Review!The Oliver Stone documentary, "South of the Border" takes aim at the media for its misinformed and misleading coverage of Latin America. The film includes clips from CNN, network news programs, the New York Times, Fox News, and other media to demonstrate just how bad the coverage can be. But a host of reviews of "South of the Border" serve as additional examples, getting countries and presidents mixed up with each other, confusing democratic elections with coups d'etat, and other errors. What do you think is the dumbest mistake in a "Border" review so far? Vote in the poll!http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/7/13/154938/096

Just Foreign Policy News July 12, 2010Could a "Great Negotiation" End the War in Afghanistan? A key obstacle to moving the debate on negotiations to end the war in Afghanistan is that most Americans don't know much diplomatic history. This ignorance makes us vulnerable to facile slogans: for the neocons, it's a noun, a verb, and Neville Chamberlain. But Fredrik Stanton has published a corrective: "Great Negotiations: Agreements that Changed the Modern World" shows how U.S. leaders entered successful negotiations with realistic goals for their adversaries. If Obama engages Taliban leaders as Kennedy engaged Khrushchev, we could end the war.http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/07/12-7 Beverly Bell: There is No Plan For Permanently Housing the 1.9 Million Haitians Who Lost Their Homes in the Quakehttp://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/12/beverly_bell_there_is_no_plan Dean Baker: The IMF Is Coming for Your Social Security Last week, the IMF told the United States that it needs to start getting its budget deficit down. It put cutting Social Security at the top of the steps that the country should take to achieve deficit reduction.http://www.truth-out.org/the-attack-real-black-helicopter-gang-the-imf-is-coming-your-social-security61291 South of the Border, scheduled screenings: Oliver Stone's documentary shows you the South America the New York Times doesn't want you to see.http://southoftheborderdoc.com/in-theatres/

A commonly proffered argument against negotiations to end the war in Afghanistan has been: "why should the Afghan Taliban negotiate, when they think they are winning?" For many months, this argument was offered by Administration officials to explain why they would not yet pursue serious negotiations with senior leaders of the Afghan Taliban.

More recently, Administration officials are saying that they have moved significantly.

Washington is eager to make [peace negotiations with high-ranking insurgents] happen - perhaps more eager than most Americans realize. "There was a major policy shift that went completely unreported in the last three months," a senior administration official tells Newsweek..."We're going to support Afghan-led reconciliation [with the Taliban]." U.S. officials have quietly dropped the Bush administration's resistance to talks with senior Taliban and are doing whatever they can to help Karzai open talks with the insurgents, although they still say any Taliban willing to negotiate must renounce violence, reject Al Qaeda, and accept the Afghan Constitution. (Some observers predict that those preconditions may eventually be fudged into goals.)

The Administration's shift - if real - is tremendously good news for ending the war. But even if this accurately reflects the intentions of the Administration, the arguments made earlier against serious negotiations are still politically powerful, in part because the Administration made them, and will likely be thrown back in the Administration's face by some of its Republican critics if efforts at a negotiated settlement begin to bear fruit. Therefore, these arguments still need to be countered, even if the Administration is no longer making them.

Just Foreign Policy News July 9, 2010On Afghanistan, Michael Steele Speaks for Me When DNC spokesman Brad Woodhouse accused RNC chair Michael Steele of "betting against our troops and rooting for failure in Afghanistan" after Steele criticized the Afghanistan war, Woodhouse was attacking every American who is against the war. Enforcing Republican Party discipline on Republicans to support the war in Afghanistan is not in the interest of the majority of Americans and the super-majority of Democrats who oppose the war. If a third, instead of 5%, of the Republicans in the House had supported the McGovern-Obey-Jones amendment, reflecting the third of Republicans in the country at large who do not support the war, the McGovern-Obey-Jones amendment requiring a timetable for withdrawal would have passed the House. With his attack on Steele, Woodhouse made it less likely that House Republicans will join House Democrats in trying to end the war sooner rather than later.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/on-afghanistan-michael-st_b_640976.html

This afternoon, leaders of several peace groups wrote to the DNC, protesting the attack on Steele, and urging the DNC not to engage in such attacks in the future, nor to present support of the war as the position of Democrats:http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/node/643 FAIR/Peter Hart: What Gets You Fired From CNN

As Americans working to end the U.S. war in Afghanistan, we write to express our deep disappointment and concern at the recent attack by Democratic National Committee spokesman Brad Woodhouse on Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele in response to Mr. Steele's criticism of the war in Afghanistan.

We have three concerns.

First, in supporting the war in Afghanistan, and portraying this as a Democratic position, Mr. Woodhouse was not representing the majority of Democrats in the United States, who oppose the war. Two-thirds of Democrats think the war is not worth the cost, the Washington Post reported in June. [1] Shortly before Mr. Woodhouse made his statement attacking Mr. Steele, three-fifths of the Democrats in the House, including Speaker Pelosi, Representative Honda, and Representative Wasserman Schultz, voted for an amendment introduced by Representative Jim McGovern, Representative David Obey, and Representative Walter Jones that would have required President Obama to establish a timetable for U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan. [2]

My friend David told me once that growing up in the South he had the experience of people saying to him, "Jews are greedy," before "correcting" themselves by "reassuring" him that: "Of course, we don't mean you, David. We know you're not like that." To which my friend David said he would respond, "Well, if 'Jews' are greedy, then I must be greedy, because I'm Jewish. So in the future, instead of saying, 'Jews are greedy,' you should just say, 'Dave is greedy,' because when you say it about 'Jews,' you say it about me."

I was reminded of this because when Democratic National Committee spokesman Brad Woodhouse accused Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele of "betting against our troops and rooting for failure in Afghanistan" after Steele criticized the Afghanistan war, Woodhouse wasn't just attacking Michael Steele; Woodhouse was attacking me and every American who is against the war.

That would be wrong, even if there were only five of us. But, in fact, there are many of us, and Brad Woodhouse has wronged us all.

In June, the Washington Postreported that 53 percent of Americans say that the war in Afghanistan is not worth its costs; 41 percent feel that way strongly. Two-thirds of Democrats, 53 percent of independents, and 35 percent of Republicans say the war is not worth its costs.

Hamas Lawmaker: Gaza Flotilla Did More Than 10,000 Rockets Who now doubts that strategic nonviolent action can transform the politics of the Israel/Palestine conflict? Not Hamas parliamentarian Aziz Dweik, the Wall Street Journal reports: "When we use violence, we help Israel win international support," said Aziz Dweik, a leading Hamas lawmaker in the West Bank. "The Gaza flotilla has done more for Gaza than 10,000 rockets." What might happen if Muslim-majority nations demanded that the US stop subsidizing Israeli settlements in the West Bank that even the Israeli government says are illegal? What might happen if they backed the boycott of corporations explicitly linked to the Israeli occupation?http://www.truth-out.org/hamas-lawmaker-gaza-flotilla-did-more-than-10000-rockets61136

Just Foreign Policy News July 7, 2010Hamas Lawmaker: Gaza Flotilla Did More Than 10,000 Rockets Who now doubts that strategic nonviolent action can transform the politics of the Israel/Palestine conflict? Not Hamas parliamentarian Aziz Dweik, the Wall Street Journal reports: "When we use violence, we help Israel win international support," said Aziz Dweik, a leading Hamas lawmaker in the West Bank. "The Gaza flotilla has done more for Gaza than 10,000 rockets." What might happen if Muslim-majority nations demanded that the US stop subsidizing Israeli settlements in the West Bank that even the Israeli government says are illegal? What might happen if they backed the boycott of corporations explicitly linked to the Israeli occupation?http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/hamas-lawmaker-gaza-floti_b_637791.html